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Quote of the day

"Just changing your variable name rarely affects the outcome of your code. Just as naming your dog one name vs another. The dog is still the same dog." [^]

Print | posted on Sunday, March 08, 2009 2:18 PM

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# re: Quote of the day

Hi Colin, hope your well.

I don't know about this quote, which means I disagree with the quote. Yes changing the variable name won't change the outcome of the code, it's external representation, but it does effect it's internal representation. You know all about this, why am I telling you; cde readability.

What would happen if the dog was named "cat" for example. It's still the same dog yes but what would other people think your pet was if you stood calling out "cat" when the buggers done a runner.

Maybe this is an anti-quote.
3/18/2009 11:33 AM | Derek Smyth
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# re: Quote of the day

The quote probably doesn't work so well out of context.

The context was that a person was trying to get some code to work and was doing weird stuff to try and get it to work. In amongs that he changed a variable from "gt" to "fr".

I agree that in the context of code readability it does help that variables are well named, but when you try and fix something by giving a badly named variable a different bad name it isn't really going to help all that much.
3/22/2009 8:03 PM | Colin Angus Mackay

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